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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26794420">Your Name in my Teeth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes'>JennaCupcakes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ill-advised blowjobs, James Fitzjames's Poor Decision Making, M/M, Missing Scene, Possibly Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:53:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,759</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26794420</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>James attempts to comfort his First.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Your Name in my Teeth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is set in episode four during/after that terrible dinner. Because that evening wasn’t busy enough, I decided to cram an ill-advised blowjob into it. I blame <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kt_fairy/pseuds/Kt_fairy">Kt_fairy</a> for encouraging me to essentially re-write <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992095">this premise</a> but make it Fitzier. Because I’m funny like that, the title for this fic is also from Dessa’s <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3X1PBRPuxMG4TASZORpfQV?si=_dlh-pHMSWGcVO35R9jaHQ">Good for You</a>. Look, it’s the standard work on pining. I don’t make the rules.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>James knows it’s only in his mind, but he feels like the light has changed now that the sun is gone.</p>
<p>He has never been a man who shunned the darker hours: night meant opportunities for amusement, a play or a pillow fight, drinking or dancing. Those were well-lit nights of his youth—the sky of the Mediterranean littered with stars while the streets of Valetta blushed with soft light. The campfires along the banks of the Euphrates flickering in a darkness that seemed absolute while a pale moon shone on. Stage lights, and rooms well-lit by candles.</p>
<p>Whale oil brings a different kind of light.</p>
<p>It’s fortunate that the man he shares his meal with is not a conversationalist, particularly on a night like this, and even less inclined to hold a conversation with James Fitzjames: Francis Crozier is content to sit and drink while James stares in turn at his empty dinner plate and the pallid skin of his First. Under the oil lamps that line the wardroom, Francis looks sickly.</p>
<p>He must have not looked quite so frightening, once upon a time, perhaps before Beechey, for James to make that comparison, but the truth is that when James pictures him now, he pictures Francis with the turgid face of the drunkard, red cheeks and nose while the rest of his skin shines with the pale tint of a cave creature, too long away from the sun.</p>
<p>He watches Francis take a long drink, his throat moving. There’s something obscene in how he enjoys it, James thinks: a man should not be so shameless in his indulgences. It irks James even more that he can’t help but notice it, no matter how low Francis sinks in his esteem. Another two men dead, and still Francis drinks.</p>
<p>“With all you’re shouldering, perhaps you should curb that for now.”</p>
<p>He motions towards the glass in Francis’s hand. Francis’s smile, if it can be called that, is all teeth, and quickly dissolves into a sneer, like ice dropped into hot water. “Does one not bring one’s habits to Terror?”</p>
<p>He looks like he’s struggling with the words, and it’s more than grief over Evans—he’s deeper now into both melancholy and drink than James has ever seen him. “Pardon?”</p>
<p>Francis reaches for the decanter with a wave of his hand. “Forget it,” he mumbles, before he pours himself another glass with hands that do not shake—but they must shake in the mornings, James thinks, before whatever dosage Francis requires nowadays has been imbibed. “Don’t let it bother you.”</p>
<p>Oh, how he enrages James! Once upon a time, he would have begged Francis Crozier on his knees for the chance to serve with him. That man, the man that James envied and admired from afar, must be somewhere in there—he can’t be all conjured, Sir James Ross wouldn’t have stood for it. It is only James Fitzjames who is denied the companionship of Francis Crozier, Antarctic hero. Instead he has to deal with Francis Crozier, Arctic drunkard.</p>
<p>“It’s not as if we’re going anywhere, is it?”</p>
<p>James watches the flowing of the dark amber liquid, reaches for something to say that will remind Francis of this man he once was. The other part of him hopes to shame Francis.</p>
<p>“You’re in command.”</p>
<p>“Of what?” Francis scoffs. “You do realise that the discovery of the Passage is beyond us now?”</p>
<p>James grits his teeth. Politeness costs him. He wonders how far he would have to push Francis to shake him out of this dismissal, this unchanging indifference towards their fate. “You don’t know that.”</p>
<p>Francis has a rebuttal on hand, of course. James knows his tirades well enough by now: the precise arrival of their doom spelled out in his brogue doesn’t inspire the same kind of fear it once used to in James. He lets it wash over himself, watches the lights cast shadows on Francis’s skin; watches the man’s throat work as he swallows another mouthful of whiskey. There’s really only one question he wants answered now: not the passage, nor the identity of their pursuer.</p>
<p>“Why are you here?” He hadn’t thought there was any ire left in him, but watching Francis never fails to raise his blood. “No one was ordered to this. We volunteered. <em>You</em> volunteered.”</p>
<p>Francis’s face twists into a grimace James cannot interpret. “I was, in fact, ordered.”</p>
<p>“By whom? Not by the Admiralty. You were never Barrow’s first choice.” <em>I was</em>, he doesn’t add, because he knows the choice words Francis would find for that sort of appointment.</p>
<p>“Keep Sir John safe and ensure his judgement. That’s what she asked me to do.” A pause. “Sophia.” The name seems to cost him a great deal.</p>
<p>And God, in that moment, James wants to laugh—Sophia? That’s what all of this is about? A girl?</p>
<p>“Miss Cracroft? She rejected your proposal, did she not?”</p>
<p>It’s the wrong thing to say, he realises almost immediately—he isn’t supposed to know the precise details, and the anger that flashes across Francis’s face tells James he knows exactly who betrayed whose trust here.</p>
<p>“You discussed this?”</p>
<p>“We—Actually, Sir John regretted how it happened. He was… burdened by it.”</p>
<p>This does nothing to ease Francis’s mood. He is quick to anger, and proud, though he’d accuse James readily of the latter sin, too. He would be right to. James is proud of his achievements, he knows their value precisely, because he’s always had to keep book of the precise accounts of his reputation. Francis’s pride, however, is something feral—a street dog, biting even a hand outstretched in kindness. “Burdened by the thought of a third attempt, no doubt.”</p>
<p>The thought alone that a man might consider a third proposal after being rejected twice strikes James. Who would be so persistent? Who would have so little respect for their own dignity?</p>
<p>“Good Christ, Francis.” James shakes his head. “Is that truly why you’re here?”</p>
<p>He would shake Francis, or strike him—some physical contact seems in order to bridge the distance between them. James needs to reach him: Francis, this man who mocks James for thinking the world owes him fame when privately, Francis longs for his own unattainable glory.</p>
<p>Francis stands.</p>
<p>“Keep your pity. You’re going to need all the pity you have for what’s coming.”</p>
<p>James is beyond sick of the patronising tone of Francis’s voice. He speaks to James as though he is little more than a boy, when James doesn’t lack experience—it’s just that their experiences differ. James hasn’t battled walls of ice, but he has scaled the walls of Zhenjiang. He has lost friends, to bullets and illness.</p>
<p>James watches Francis’s retreat. He contemplates letting him go. But there is a path—perhaps, for the first time, James recognises the shape of his longing, the desperation that drives him to the bottle. Francis thinks himself misunderstood, peerless.</p>
<p>“Francis,” he says. When Francis doesn’t stop, doesn’t even turn to acknowledge that James has spoken, James implores him, “Wait”, and rises with the word.</p>
<p>“I apologise. For—” He falters for a moment. Here is where he is most likely to draw Francis’s ire. “For any past indiscretions, mine or Sir John’s. Your business is your own.”</p>
<p>Francis stands like a great shadow in the doorway. How he must ache, James thinks, to long for something that will never be his. That he would damn them all because he thinks there’s no hope left. James knows there will be no third attempt, even if Francis were to return. Francis has given up—on Sophia, the passage, and himself.</p>
<p>“No apology is needed, James,” the shadow says. His voice is coarse: the whiskey that ran over roughed it up like sandpaper.</p>
<p>“Would you permit me,” James says carefully, stepping closer to the shadow, “one more liberty, then?”</p>
<p>He can smell the whiskey on Francis’s breath. He can smell the sweat, sour with the alcohol, and yet underneath he smells something else that must be Francis, a sun that shines even when clouds obscure it. Even when the tilt of the earth’s axis forces it behind the horizon for months at a time. His thoughts betray his own shameful longing.</p>
<p>He wants to go to his knees, but fears it might frighten Francis, who often reacts prickly to kindness, like a cat stroked the wrong way. He puts a hand on Francis’s arm, instead.</p>
<p>“If there’s something I might do, to ease—we all feel lonely, I understand, and—"</p>
<p>Francis does not cast him off, but he glowers at James. “What are you saying?”</p>
<p>“Merely that there’s… comfort that can be found, between men.” James treads carefully, here. This is more treacherous than ice.</p>
<p>“For God’s sake, James.”</p>
<p>“Are you not lonely, then?”</p>
<p>The hand Francis allows him to keep on his arm betrays him. Francis is as desperate for a touch as the rest of them. Small wonder: he must have permitted himself few liberties if he was hoping to win the Lady Sophia’s hand. Who knows how long Francis has lacked the touch of a warm hand?</p>
<p>“I…” Francis’s eyes flicker to James’s hand—bare, keeping a firm hold of Francis’s arm. He blinks, as though he is not sure of what he sees. He licks his lips.</p>
<p>“For God’s sake,” he says again, quieter this time. He watches James’s other hand come up, and—brother to the first—seize Francis’s other arm.</p>
<p>“Comfort,” James says, “There’s nothing wrong with comfort.”</p>
<p>Francis casts his gaze downward, nods. He looks, James thinks, like a man defeated.</p>
<p>“Come, then.”</p>
<p>Francis’s berth isn’t far, but the way there is interminably long, with all the thoughts that can pass through a man’s head on the way. James is acutely aware of the beating of his own heart. It hurts in his chest. Francis lets James in first—a strangely cavalier gesture in an evening that has gone entirely off script—then slides the door shut behind them.</p>
<p>There is no light in the berth. Francis finds a match by touch alone, lights one of the whale oil lamps while James does his best to stay out of Francis’s way. It is a strange dance. The lamp flickers to life, illuminating Francis’s face in kinder colours than the wardroom could. The expression on it reads nearly as a challenge.</p>
<p>Francis seats himself, a stiffness in his limbs—James recognises the nerves evident in the way he avoids James’s eyes. To quash it, James goes to his knees before him. He runs his hands up from Francis’s knees to the middle of his thighs first, a determined touch meant to acquaint and ground. He hears Francis breathe out slowly, as though releasing something deep. James repeats the motion.</p>
<p>He swipes his thumbs towards the inside of Francis’s thighs. Francis twitches, like he wants to close his legs but resists it. James digs his thumbs into the crease of Francis’s hips; feels the shudder of Francis’s body.</p>
<p>“Is this your idea of comfort?”</p>
<p>Francis may have aimed for a jibe, to make a mockery of how willingly James went to his knees, but his voice betrays him: he is breathless, affected by James’s gently touches. He has been craving this, and now that it’s bubbled to the surface, it is impossible to deny.</p>
<p>James savours the shifting of muscles in the sturdy legs under his hands. To be without touch for so long, he almost feels like he is the only real person on a ship full of ghosts. But Francis—breathing shallowly, legs twitching almost imperceptibly—is no ghost.</p>
<p>“Must you question every good thing?” James sighs. To silence Francis, he places a determined hand over his prick. Francis’s makes a small noise, a breathy “<em>ah</em>”, and his eyes find James’s.</p>
<p>“Forgive me,” Francis pants, and his brow creases with the effort of the words, “for questioning why you would suddenly—”</p>
<p>His head tips back as James presses the heel of his hand down. “Hush.”</p>
<p>Francis chuckles, and it paters off into a whimper as James presses his hand down again. James can feel the twitching evidence of his desire, firm under James’s hand despite the whiskey, speaking of just how much Francis has been craving a touch—any touch. James doubt it is his touch that Francis craves.</p>
<p>He unbuttons the front of Francis’s pants slowly. There is flirtation in it, but James is still mindful of the fact that Francis is likely unaccustomed to such treatment. Francis’s prick springs free, a pleasing length in James’s hand. Francis’s breath hitches again.</p>
<p>A bit of coquetry would suit James well in this moment. Someone has to remain in control. But in truth, now that he is greeted with the sight of Francis’s manhood, he has little time for it. His tongue darts out for a taste. Francis swears.</p>
<p>“Jesus Christ.”</p>
<p>The warmth of Francis is unparalleled. His flesh is hot, and James cannot bear to leave him wanting—he swallows Francis down, hands firm on Francis’s hip, which is good because as soon as James gets a mouth on him, Francis’s body convulses violently, and he lets out a sharp cry.</p>
<p>There’s little art to it.</p>
<p>Francis’s prick is warm in James’s mouth, and James is hungry. A pleased though is spared to Francis’s nonsensical mumblings—“Yes, God” and “There, right there, keep going” as James sets about—not unkindly, but with method to it—taking Francis apart. His own prick is stiff in his trousers, as though the thrum of Francis’s desire has plucked a string within James as well.</p>
<p>He has set himself a goal of taking all of Francis into him, as though by doing so he can exorcise the man’s loneliness. It’s no mean feat: James has not done this in a long time, longer than the years they have been locked in the ice. His body protests, both from lack of practise and the exhaustion that sits under everything he does now. His breath comes heavily as he swallows Francis deeper, feeling his prick stopper up his breath and then forcing himself past it, until Francis is seated snugly in his mouth and James feels his eyes and his throat burning.</p>
<p>He can’t look up, but he hears Francis moan—a high-pitched, piteous sound. His hand, trembling now, finds James’s hair and anchors himself there. He twitches in James’s mouth—James wants to pull back, but Francis holds fast and sobs, once, cying: “Sophia,” before warmth floods down James’s throat and he struggles not to choke on it.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is shameful, but his first thought is still towards the ache in his trousers. A man with more good sense might have stood and excused himself. James wipes his mouth, then reaches for the fastenings of his trousers, drawing himself out, determined that if he cannot salvage his pride, he can at least make it quick. Francis is bleary-eyed and breathing heavily, clearly no help to James, who presses a firm hand to his own need and grits his teeth—more violence than pleasure, but it’s what he wants, it’s no less than what he deserves for not knowing to leave a thing alone—</p>
<p>He finds his release there, on the floor of Francis’s berth, breathing into Francis’s thigh. Instead of bemoaning the emptiness he feels, he is glad for it: were he not devoid of all emotion in this moment, he might feel the burning of shame more clearly. As things stand, he can put himself to rights without a blush. His movements feel mechanical. Francis is slower to move, yet.</p>
<p>“James,” he says after a moment of James fussing with buttons and wishing for a steward to put him to rights. “I—”</p>
<p>James reaches for a smile from his arsenal of deflections—his most empty, most pleasing smile, that puts everything he doesn’t feel on the outside of his body.</p>
<p>“I say,” he says, “You look better already, Francis.”</p>
<p>Francis’s forehead crumples. The gunnery lieutenant in James still knows how to hit a target.</p>
<p>“I misspoke,” Francis says hastily, before James can interrupt him again.</p>
<p>James frowns. “Save your breath,” he says, “And if there’s nothing further to discuss, I’ll be off to Erebus.”</p>
<p>Francis’s chin drops to his chest. “You have my leave to go.”</p>
<p>The taste of him is still on James’s tongue as he exits the berth. James runs his tongue along his teeth, chasing the taste of it. There’s a tang of copper underneath, barely perceptible. James shivers.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>... And then he doesn't get to go to Erebus and they have to stare at each other uncomfortably for the rest of the night. Life's a bitch, Fitzjames.</p>
<p>You can also find me on <a href="https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> and now on <a href="https://twitter.com/veganthranduil">twitter</a>! If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving me a comment.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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